Windsor Canadian Music Festival 2012

 

Composer: Orpheus Drones

Composer, Artistic Director, Radio Host, Administrator and Professor, are just some of the “hats” that have been worn by T. Patrick Carrabré. For well over a decade he worked closely with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, including six seasons as composer-in-residence and co-curator of the orchestra’s wildly successful New Music Festival. Also active in the media, Carrabré has just completed a two-season run as the weekend host of CBC Radio 2’s contemporary music show The Signal. Carrabré’s best known compositions include Inuit Games, for throat singers (katajjak) and orchestra, which was a recommended work at the International Rostrum of Composers (2003), Sonata No. 1, The Penitent, for violin and piano, and From the Dark Reaches, which were nominated for JUNO awards (in the category of Best Classical Composition), and A Hammer For Your Thoughts… which was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award. Commissioners have included pianists Janina Fialkowska and Alexander Tselyakov, The Winnipeg Singers, the Gryphon Trio, the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society, choreographer Ruth Cansfield and cellist Shauna Rolston, as well as the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition.

 

In 2005, Carrabré’s collaborative work Creation Stories was premiered to great acclaim at the Centara Corporation New Music Festival. Uniting music and musicians from many cultures and styles, it weaves together alternate accounts of how our world came into being, celebrating both our common memories and our differences. Carrabré’s early compositional studies were with Dr. Robert Turner at the University of Manitoba and with Jules Léger Prize winning composer Peter Paul Koprowski at the University of Western Ontario. He later went on to work closely with Pulitzer Prize winner George Perle, completing a Ph.D. at the City University of New York. Besides his teaching at Brandon University, Carrabré has served terms as Dean of Music and Vice-President (Academic and Research).

 

Composer: Two forms of intuition, Fluctuare

David Eagle composes chamber, orchestral and electroacoustic music, and explores interactive computer applications in composition, improvisation, multimedia and sound spatialization. A Professor at the University of Calgary, he teaches composition and electroacoustic music, and directs the Sonic Arts Lab and Happening New Music Festival. He studied music at McGill University, at the Institut für Neue Musik, Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg, Germany, and at the University of California, Berkeley (PhD 1992).

 

David Eagle performs the aXiO, a new digital instrument designed to allow greater expression in interactive electroacoustic music. A major project was “one thousand curves, ten thousand colours”, a collaborative multimedia concert with composer Hope Lee and Ensemble Resonance, integrating live acoustic and electroacoustic music with computer-generated images. In August 2001, Ensemble Resonance performed the work again, this time with choreography at the Cantai Festival in Taipei, Taiwan. He has also been composer/performer in residence with Toronto’s New Adventures in Sound Art at the summer Sound Travels Festivals on Toronto Island and has performed at electroacoustic festivals in Denmark (MIX.01 International Festival for Electronic Music, Dansk Institut for Elektroakustisk Musik, Musikhuset Aarhus) and Rome (Musica Scienza 2001, Centro Ricerche Musicali).

 

Eagle’s work can be heard on New Concert Discs, Clef, UNICAL, isidorart recording, ARKTOS Recordings, MAPL, New Works Calgary and Centrediscs labels, and a new release on light blue records of selected interactive and electroacoustic works.

 

Composer: Les Cloches, WindoW

Dr. Keith Hamel is a Professor in the School of Music, an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS), a Researcher at the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) and Director of the Computer Music Studio at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Hamel has been on the Faculty at UBC since 1987, and has been a Full Professor since 1997. He holds a B.Mus. from Queen’s University (1981) and A.M. and Ph.D degrees from Harvard University (1984, 1985). He also studied Computer Music under the supervision of Barry Vercoe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology between 1981 and 1984. Dr. Hamel has written both acoustic and electroacoustic music and has been awarded many prizes in both media. His works have been performed by many of the finest soloists and ensembles both in Canada and abroad. He has received commissions from IRCAM (Paris), the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver New Music Ensemble, the Elektra Women’s Choir, musica intima, Hammerhead Consort, Standing Wave, Hard Rubber Orchestra, as well as from outstanding performers such as flutist Robert Cram, bassoonist Jesse Read, clarinetist Jean-Guy Boisvert, saxophonist Julia Nolan, and pianist Douglas Finch. Many of his recent compositions focus on interaction between live performers and computer-controlled electronics.

 

As a computer music researcher, Hamel is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on music notation software. He is author of the NoteWriter and NoteAbilityPro software programs which are used around the world for professional music engraving and publishing, and he has developed interactive environments for live performer and computer interaction. His research has been funded by the Canada Council, the SSHRC, a Killam Research Fellowship, and UBC Arts-IT.

 

Dr. Hamel is the former Vice-President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), a former President of the Canadian Music Centre, and a former board member of the Canadian League of Composers. His music is published by Editions Musicales Européennes of Paris and by Cypress Press of Vancouver, and several of his compositions are available on commercial recordings.

 

Composer: Here the Bird, Caged

James Harley is a Canadian composer presently based at the University of Guelph, where he teaches digital music, composition, and related courses. He obtained his doctorate in composition at McGill University in 1994, after spending six years composing and studying music in Europe (London, Paris, Warsaw). His music has been awarded prizes in competitions in Canada (CBC, New Music Concerts, SOCAN), USA (McKnight Foundation), UK (Holland Prize, Huddersfield Festival), France (Bourges, MC2), Poland (Lutoslawski, Serocki), Japan (Irino), and has been performed and broadcast around the world. Some of Harley’s compositions are available on disc (Artifact, ATMA, Kappa, McGill, Musicworks, PeP, Soundprints) and his scores are primarily available through the Canadian Music Centre. He has been commissioned by, among others, Codes d’Accs, Continuum, Ensemble contemporain de Montral, Hammerhead Consort, Kappa, Kore, Kovalis Duo, New Music Concerts, NUMUS, Oshawa-Durham Symphony, Open Ears Festival, Polish Society for New Music, SMCQ, Transit FestivalBelgium, Trio Phoenix, Vancouver Bach Choir. He composes music for acoustic forces as well as electroacoustic media, with a particular interest in multi-channel audio. According to Marc Couroux (Musicworks 69), Harley’s music “resides at the intersection of a network of influences rather than proliferating from a central ideology Harley accepts that the complexity of nature requires a more artistically imaginative interpretation than the simple extension of an Arcadian, placid contemplation Harley consequently oriented himself towards the theory of chaos, which derives its principles from a much more global study of natural mechanisms than was previously allowed due to hyperspecialization James Harley defends on the highest level the great Canadian creative tradition, rooted in the natural world, a metaphor for the irreducible complexity of Canada and, by extension, of universal humanity.”

 

Composer: Night Chill

In school I learned to appreciate the beauty of the creation and inner machinations of music.

 

Outside of school I learned to appreciate the beauty of sound and passion. I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, so that should tell you something about what kind of pop culture influences me. My favourite music to listen to is punk rock, Beethoven, Debussy, Ligeti, George Crumb, Murray Schafer and Philip Glass. I can’t stand Mozart, with the exception of his two symphonies in G minor. I’m married to a wonderful woman and soul-mate, and we have two amazing young daughters. Because of that, I also listen to a lot of kid’s music (not always by choice!). Through that I’ve also discovered a wealth of really great film music, particularly historical Disney stuff; I’d be lying to myself if I said that hadn’t had at least some influence on me. I’m a lousy performer. I grew up playing violin, and picked up guitar and drums along the way. I play drums in a rock band. I’m a bit of a foodie, and have an appreciation (if not always a budget) for good wines and single-malt scotch. I’m also very passionate about cars. I own a 1972 Porsche 911, which I maintain myself in my garage. There’s a direct correlation somewhere in there between the very fine inner workings of an internal combustion engine and the various notes, figurings and nuances of a composed piece of music, as well as the raw power and speed of a performance car, and the visceral emotions found in a lot of my music.

 

If you ‘wants just the facts’, I was born in 1975 in London, Ontario. I have a Bachelor of Music from Queen’s University in Kinston, Ontario, and a Master of Music in Composition from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. I now live in Hamilton, Ontario, just outside Toronto.

 

WCMF Artistic Advisor; Composer Knob and Tube, Braga

Brent Lee is a Canadian musician, scholar, and educator. He studied at McGill University and later the University of British Columbia, where he completed his doctoral degree in 1999. His compositions range from orchestral music to electroacoustic pieces, and include jazz and incidental music. He has received awards and commissions from CAPAC, SOCAN, the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Gaudeamus Foundation (The Netherlands), and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France). In addition to performances and broadcasts in many countries, several of his works have been commercially recorded.

 

His compositions and improvisations often explore the relationship between acoustic instruments and digital sound processing; this interest has extended to his work as a performing member of a number of improvising ensembles including Gems, Strictly Plutonic, Modus Vivendi, and the Electric Improv Lab. Most recently, he served as composer-in-residence with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2006.

 

He has been an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre since 1991 and Artistic Advisor for the Windsor Canadian Music Festival since 2003.